1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a method for generating test cases for a software program, and more particularly, to generating the method which uses fewer test cases but can still meet high-coverage requirement.
2. Description of the Related Art
When a piece of software is being developed, software testing is very important. The programmer usually creates some test cases for the modified part of the program based on his or her prior experiences in order to verify the correctness of the program. However, due to insufficient test time, the programmer would normally try to reduce the required test time, thus compromising software quality. Therefore, it is important to find out the required test cases within a limited period.
The term “coverage rate” is used to evaluate the coverage level which reflects how effectively the test cases can debug the program. There are many methods for calculating the coverage rate, such as statement coverage, branch coverage, condition coverage, decision coverage, condition/decision coverage, modified condition/decision coverage (MC/DC) and path coverage. For system testing of American airlines, a 100% coverage rate is required for the MC/DC criterion in order to reduce the number of hidden mistakes. Therefore, it is important to reduce the number of test cases but still be able to meet the high-coverage requirement.